Albala, Ken(neth) 1964-

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ALBALA, Ken(neth) 1964-

PERSONAL:

Born 1964. Education: George Washington University, B.A. (with distinction), 1986; Yale University, M.A., 1987; Columbia University, Ph.D., 1993.

ADDRESSES:

Office—History Department, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Columbia University, preceptor in history, 1990-93; New School for Social Research, adjunct instructor in history, 1993; University of the Pacific, assistant professor, 1994-2000, associate professor of history, 2000—, acting chair of department, 2001, chair of department, 2002—. University of the Pacific, member of Committee for Academic Planning and Development, 1995-96, chair, 1996-98, member of College of the Pacific Curriculum Committee, 1995-98, member of Mentor I Planning Committee, 1996-2001, member of Academic Council, 1997-2000, served on Executive Board, 1997-98, member of University Awards Committee, 1997-2000, chair, 1999-2000, member and interviewer of History Department Search Committee, 1997-98, chair, 2001, member of Humanities Center, 1997-2001, chair, 1999-2001, member of Honors Program Committee, 1998-2000, member of Gender Studies Board, 2000-2001, member and chair of Tenure Review Committee, 2001-02; public lecturer, 1995—. Exhibitions: You Are What You Read: Food Texts as Historical Documents, New York Academy of Medicine, 1998-99, author of exhibit texts and translations.

MEMBER:

International Association of Culinary Professionals, Renaissance Society of America, Association for the Study of Food and Society, 16th Century Studies Association, American Historical Association, Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society (inducted spring, 2003).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Travel grant from Committee for Academic Planning and Development, University of the Pacific (UOP), 1997; UOP Faculty Research Grant to Wellcome Institute, London, England, summer, 1998; New York Council on the Humanities Grant; UOP Faculty Research Grant to Biblioteca Internazionale "La Vigna," Vicenza, Italy, and Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy, summer, 2001; Eberhardt Research Grant to Biblioteca Vaticana Apostolica, Rome, Italy, summer, 2003; International Association for Culinary Professionals Martini and Rossi Scholarship, 2003.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with others) Mentor I Reader, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1996, 4th edition, 1999; Houghton-Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2000.

Eating Right in the Renaissance, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2002.

Food in Early Modern Europe, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2003.

Series editor for Food Culture around the World, Greenwood Press (twelve volumes). Contributor to books, including Food from the Waters, edited by Harlan Walker, Prospect Books, 1998; The Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, edited by Paul F. Grendler, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2000; The Cambridge World History of Food, edited by Kenneth F. Kiple, Cambridge University Press, 2000; The Reader's Guide to British History, edited by David Loades, Fitzroy Dearborn, 2002; and The Encyclopedia of Food, edited by Saul Katz, Charles Scribner's Sons, in press. Contributor to periodicals, including Gastronomica, Renaissance Quarterly, and Sixteenth Century Studies. Author of numerous conference papers.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe, University of Illinois Press; (With Caroline Cox) Opening Up North America, Facts on File; What's Cooking in the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Elizabethan England (cookbook), Greenwood Press.

SIDELIGHTS:

History professor and Renaissance scholar Ken Albala is the author of two books on food and diet in fifteenth-to-seventeenth-century Europe. He has also written numerous book chapters and articles on dietary theory and practice in historical Europe. He is a well-known lecturer at conferences in the United States, Canada, and Europe, where he has presented papers on food and nutrition in history as well as modern aspects of diet and health.

In Eating Right in the Renaissance, Albala divides the appearance of expert dietary texts in Europe into three time periods: the 1470s to 1530, 1530 to the 1570s, and the 1570s to 1650. In the first period, he says, there was little concern with health. Most people were considered to be generally healthy, and the popular dictum on food was quod sapit nutrit (if it tastes good, it is good for you). The lavish banquets of princely courts were deemed necessary to conduct political business and were only mildly criticized by court physicians. Typical advice was to eat food that was constitutionally like the human body. Therefore, diets in the era sometimes included human blood and milk, although a moral ban on eating human flesh kept cannibalism at bay except among certain peoples. In a review of the book for the Guardian, Steven Shapin summarized, "St. Jerome was said to have been shocked to witness the Scots enjoying a meal of swineherd buttock and maiden's breast, and a late 16th-century writer noted that cannibals accounted human flesh 'the sweetest meat of all others.'" Dietary experts, however, approved pork and other animal meats and blood "'taken from a clean, happy and temperate adolescent', or the milk of a healthy young woman of 'tempered complexion,'" Shapin quoted.

As decades passed, physicians introduced the theory that foods should correspond to the four humors of the body: blood, choler, phlegm, and bile. People should eat foods that were aligned with their natural temperament, they said, to avoid sickness. Weight control had not yet become an issue. Veering away from a presumption of good health, medicine now took a view that most people were sickly but could be prevented from becoming worse by restricting the foods they ate. Lavish banquets were frowned on as doctors encouraged a return to the simple and frugal diets that had provided long life to human ancestors. Foods like melons and cucumbers were said to putrefy in the digestive system and cause illness. In a review of the book for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nina C. Ayoub observed, "Anti-melon tirades filled books on diet … and the public swallowed the vivid images of decay." On the other hand, certain herbs—like arugula, parsley, anise, and mint—were said to improve sexual function, and wine was considered a staple nutrient.

By the third period, experts proclaimed that only by controlling the appetite could one stay healthy. As Puritanism grew, physicians prescribed the least tasty foods as the healthiest. By late in the seventeenth century, the scientific method had replaced many of the theories about the four humors, although dietary experts continued to offer quite varied advice. Shapin wrote, "Albala struggles to identify some causative influence from the decrees of expertise to lay practice but, in the end, isn't certain he can find one. Such was the heterogeneity of 'warring camps', he concedes, that people probably 'stopped listening'."

A reviewer for the University of California Press wrote that Albala "takes us through an array of historical sources in a narrative that is witty and spiced with fascinating details." The contributor also called the book an "elegantly written and often surprising new chapter on the history of food."

Albala followed Eating Right in the Renaissance with Food in Early Modern Europe, an authoritative work on the importance of food to Europeans as their culture evolved after the end of the Middle Ages. Albala includes early recipes translated from French, German, and Italian, numerous illustrations, and a timeline showing the way diet evolved along with the people.